Communication systems such as the systems promulgated by the Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) Forum (such systems conform to the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.16e Standard) typically include a plurality of base stations and a plurality of remote stations that communicate with one or more of the base stations by transmitting and receiving data. The time and frequency resources used in such communication systems are often partitioned into a series (in time) of frames, each frame being further partitioned according to both time and frequency. For example, the IEEE 802.16e Standard utilizes orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) multiplexing, and each frame comprises a plurality of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) symbols which thus partition the frame by time. Additionally, each OFDM symbol comprises a plurality of subcarriers, thus also partitioning the frame by frequency.
In OFDMA, a particular data transmission (referred to as a “burst” in the IEEE 802.16e Standard) may be carried on a subset of OFDM symbols in a frame, and thus a subcarrier may carry data from different bursts from OFDM symbol to OFDM symbol. Similarly, a burst may be carried on a subset of subcarriers in each OFDM symbol, and thus each OFDM symbol may include data from a plurality of different bursts. With such a multiplexing scheme, media access control (MAC) systems tend to be complex and expensive to implement.